I recently moved my home office and MM hasn't been the same since. It's a late 2012 model with a core i5 2.5mhz and 16GB of Ram.

Not too many intensive programs, I run Google chrome for my browser, and time machine for backup. With exception to itunes, tomtom & garmin software, most of my applications are web based. Since moving it, I get that damn beachball ALL THE TIME. Need to force quit almost all software. Rarely does it spin for less than 5 min at a time. I ran activity monitor and its telling me I have only 5-15mb of free memory. How is that possible?

I D/L some free memory app and while it worked for a little while, it's back to its old tricks. Migrating from the PC world was an easy transition, but this just makes me want to pull what little hair I have left, out.

If its not due to faulty ram, reducing the amount you have available then have a look in Activity Monitor you can find it in the Application Utilities folder.

This will list all of the processes running on your system. You can sort the list by clicking on the column headings. Sort on the Real Mem column and look for the app thats using the most and stealing all your memory._________________Phil

You said you tried a memory free up application do you remember the name of it because some of those are malware and spyware and can cause extreme memory use in order to do background tasks like monitoring you and your bank accounts please what is the name of the application please...

You said you tried a memory free up application do you remember the name of it because some of those are malware and spyware and can cause extreme memory use in order to do background tasks like monitoring you and your bank accounts please what is the name of the application please...

Re macmans comment. You could boot into safe mode and see how thing are running, to help determine if it is software related.

Contacted Apple Support. After what felt like an eternity but really only an hour or so by telephone, their answer was essentially "no clue, try reformatting the drive & call us back if there's an issue"

Contacted Apple Support. After what felt like an eternity but really only an hour or so by telephone, their answer was essentially "no clue, try reformatting the drive & call us back if there's an issue"

Great response. It's at the top of my list.

The first step is determining whether you are experiencing a hardware or a software issue. Especially when your computer is still covered by warranty. Why would you want to spend hours of your time if the issue would have been covered by warranty?

If you tried hours of troubleshooting and you still don't know whether you are having a hardware of software issue, formatting the drive is the simplest way to make the determination.

You can clone your entire hard drive to an external and move it back again, it's not a big deal.

I always make bootable clones of my systems when my system is working properly so I can determine whether or not I'm having a hardware or a software issue within minutes and I can always go back to that state if needed.